Imagine if members of your community joined together, encouraged one another to foster and adopt, and created a network of support for these families. We would see more children with families of their own, richer family life, more engaged communities—and a better society.
The Second Nurture Model
Plant Seeds:
Getting a sense of community interest, learning about and meeting the potential local social service partners, educating the community about Second Nurture through new and existing programming.
Take Root:
Introduce interested parties to each other, support participants individually and as a group, continue multilevel awareness-raising and education about Second Nurture throughout the community.
Branch Out:
Prepare the membership to become a community in which fostering and adoption are integral and organic to who they are.
Bear Fruit:
The community includes foster and adoptive families, offers their time and skills, deepens their cultural richness and continually adapts to the real-time needs that emerge.
Nurture:
The cohort, ever growing in families, supports one another; the community, with a new eye to the cohort families and their kids, grows thoughtfully and responds to evolving needs; and external partnerships are deepened, expanded or concluded.
Cohort
This is the group of people who explore and pursue foster care and adoption, becoming an ever-growing, mutually supportive subgroup of foster and adoptive families. The cohort is the nucleus of the program. Read More
Networks of Support
There are two categories of support networks outside the cohort itself: the community in which the cohort is ensconced and the county agencies and private organizations that the community relies on for specific expertise. Read More
Community Culture
The community weaves foster care and adoption into the cultural fabric so that a.) adoption and fostering are highlighted values; and b.) foster and adoptive families see themselves reflected in the identity of the community. Read More
There are three components to our model.
Cohort
Whether a family is just curious about fostering and adoption or has already taken the plunge, nothing replaces the wisdom, comfort, and “I-see-you” sense of community than meeting others on the same path. Each month, Second Nurture helps families connect by facilitating a bagel brunch, where they share experiences and meet expert guests on everything from hair care to how to talk with kids about their birth families to trauma-informed yoga, and so much more. Between meetings, families keep up with each other via a private group Facebook page. A cohort is a safe, supportive place to navigate the journey through foster care and adoption.
Networks of Support
When members of the cohort face a challenge, they turn to each other first for expertise and support, developing a trusted group of volunteer experts over time. When a need can’t be met by the cohort members, the need is made known to their wider community. When needed, Second Nurture steps in to connect members with county agencies or private organizations that can provide the necessary resources and expertise like therapeutic services, diversity training, cultural opportunities, and more.
Community Culture
Second Nurture works with communities to develop resources that integrate fostering and adoption into communal traditions, rituals and events across a range of settings so that all families feel seen and held by the larger community.
By normalizing foster care and adoption as common, celebrated ways of growing a family and facilitating a network of trust, companionship, and support among foster and adoptive families, Second Nurture builds communities that a.) hold adoption and fostering as essential values b.) help foster and adoptive families see themselves reflected in the identity of the community.
How It Works
With Second Nurture, you're on this journey with friends at your side.
Our model gives you a path, as a family and as a community, to become the families and communities kids need.
Grow A Community
Any community can become a Second Nurture community: faith, LGBTQ+ centers, schools...
Imagine if members of your community joined together, encouraged one another to foster and adopt, and created a network of support for these families. We would see more children with families of their own, richer family life, more engaged communities—and a better society.